It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Recruiter told me the team is “very neurodivergent”
I’m interviewing for a managerial role, and have been a manager in tech for a while. During an interview yesterday, the recruiter was describing what the hiring manager was looking for. In it she stated unprompted that “this is a very neurodivergent team so we’re looking for a manager who is incredibly empathetic.”
I was surprised to hear this from the recruiter! Did the manager tell her? Did the engineers? On the positive side, it’s potentially very inclusive and accepting of a team, and I have lots of experience managing neurodivergent engineers so it is great to hear they’re aware. On the negative side, it could lead to a manager joining and immediately asking who is the “neurodivergent” person out the gate or treating them with a bias.
The recruiter had other language (“empathetic,” “soft touch,” “accepting behaviors”) that concerned me, especially as a woman. In the past, these hints meant the company had a clear expectation of how I would manage emotions and communications of my direct reports for them in a more motherly or secretarial way for the sake of a prized engineer. Examples include, “Boss, you asked me to do X by Y date. Could you put a reminder on my calendar to do that for me so I don’t forget?” and “Your direct didn’t feel psychologically safe when you said they shouldn’t use the corporate travel site for personal flights” (yeah, I know).
Is it illegal for the recruiter to tell me this about their team? Should I be concerned, or am I letting my past color this new, potentially inclusive company?
It’s not illegal. They’re not giving you specific medical information about an individual employee; they’re telling you something about the makeup of the team that affects the kind of approach they’re looking for. It’s okay for them to be transparent that there’s lots of neurodiversity on the team and they’re looking for someone with a management approach that will work well for their specific context. Not talking about that risks causing problems.
But I’d be very cautious about the emphasis on “soft touch” and “accepting behaviors” — that could mean all sorts of things, and you’d really, really want to get specifics about what it means to them before deciding if it’s a job you’d want. If you continue talking with them, ask about that — “You mentioned you’re looking for a manager with a soft touch and emphasized the importance of accepting behaviors. Can you tell me more about specifically what you’re looking for in that regard, and what has and hasn’t meshed well with the team in the past?”
2. I told my manager that I’d rather die than come to work
I’m a software engineer at a large corporation. The company is generally pretty good to employees — we have good benefits, I like my coworkers, my workload isn’t excessive, and I have good work-life balance. I do not enjoy my work, but thats a separate problem for me to sort out.
The issue is that I have some mental health illnesses that are peaking lately. This past week, I had a remote 1:1 with my manager where I broke down in tears over a recent mistake (one of many), told my manager I feel like I don’t contribute anything of value to our organization or our team, and then told her that sometimes I’d rather die than go to work! (To her credit, my manager turned this meeting around after 20 minutes of me losing it, and we actually discussed work tasks at the end.)
Obviously I am not okay. I spent a LOT of time with my care team this week and got to spend additional “quality time” with them this weekend … an additional 72 hours, in fact. Clearly I need more time off etc, and I am working on that … but in the interim, how do I talk to my manager? What do you say after “I’d rather die than work for you”?! I didn’t mean it! She’s actually a wonderful, supportive person who gave me my start in this industry.
In her shoes, I’d be really worried about you and it would help to hear something like, “I want to apologize for what I said in our meeting last week. It was a moment of stress for me, but that’s not an accurate reflection of how I feel about my job. You’ve been a great, supportive manager, and that’s not something I should have put on you. I have some things going on outside of work that got to me that day, but I’m actively working on them and am hopeful about moving forward.”
3. Can my company force me to use my personal phone number for work-related database access?
My company subscribes to a database that requires a multi-factor authentication to access the site. They allow text messages or the option to receive a code via email. The option to receive a code via email is only available once a month. The database has limited relevant data for my work, so I infrequently use it; however, I do sometimes need access to it.
Previously, I had a corporate-issued cell phone, which allowed me to access the database with no issues. However, to cut costs, my company recently got rid of our cell phones and switched to WebEx, which does not allow text messages. As a result of this change, I am only able to access the database once per month, as that is their arbitrary rule for email MFA. I brought up the issue to my boss, whose solution was that I provide them with my personal phone number and get the text messages, which I am not comfortable doing.
I asked the database company for an exemption to get multiple emails per month (I use the database maybe once or twice a month, and regularly go months without using it), and they say there is no workaround and they need to have a phone number.
I told my boss and grandboss that I am not comfortable providing my personal phone number to this company, so we are seemingly at an impasse. I used the excuse that I don’t want to field any sales calls. (They have called me in the past, asking why I don’t use their service more often.)
My grandboss is going to try and talk to our service rep to see if I can get an SSO option, but if not, they seemingly are going to require me to use my personal phone number to access the database and try to get me on a do not call list. I don’t really have a good reason for not providing my number, other than it makes me incredibly uncomfortable for them to have my personal data, but at the same time, I feel a little silly in saying this. Am I being unreasonable here? Could there be any repercussions for me refusing to provide my personal phone number to access a database I infrequently use?
In theory, your employer can require you to use your personal phone number to access the database and, in theory, could fire you if you refuse. In practice, they’re very unlikely to fire you over this (unless you have a pattern of putting up obstacles and they’re at the end of their rope). It’s more likely that they’ll just be exasperated, particularly if they get you on a do-not-call list (thereby addressing the explicit objection you offered) and you still refuse.
Any chance they can just get you a physical token or hardware key to give you access?
4. My manager won’t tell me when the person I’m covering for will be back
My manager has two direct reports with similar roles. When one person is out, the other person has to cover. My coworker, one of the aforementioned direct reports, had a medical issue arise and she’s going to be out for a prolonged period of time. Is my manager under any obligation to keep me informed as to when my coworker will return to work, especially since I am covering her duties? Covering for someone else is much easier mentally when you know how long the period of time will be. My manager is very reluctant to share any information.
Your manager might not know, or might feel that it’s not straightforward enough (like a simple “four weeks”) that she can talk about it without compromising your coworker’s privacy. To be clear, there should be something she can say without violating your colleague’s privacy, but she might be being overly cautious. From a legal perspective, there’s no reason she can’t say something like, “It’s somewhat up in the air but at least four weeks and potentially several months, and we won’t know anything more solid for a while.”
You can certainly ask, and explain why! It’s reasonable to say, “I’m not asking you to violate Jane’s privacy, but it would help me manage the increase in work if I had an idea of what the timeframe is likely to be, even if it could potentially change.”
5. Should I get paid for wrap-up tasks when a job ends?
I’m about to lose my job after being furloughed for two months; the funding for the next stage of our project just didn’t come through (thank you, dysfunctional federal government). As a remote worker in a different city from HQ, should I be paid for all the time I will spend doing any final paperwork and shipping my laptop and accessories back to the home office? There’s also a standing desk I don’t know what we’ll do with. I’m hoping they’ll tell me to keep it so I don’t have to disassemble the big thing on my own. I drove it home in my car after my on-site orientation, and I doubt they’ll want to pay for me to drive it back.
It just adds insult to injury that failing to complete our project is a huge waste of taxpayer money, but completing it would have allowed that agency to function more efficiently with fewer employees.
Legally, they have to pay you for any time you spend doing work-related tasks, including shipping back equipment. In practice, a lot of people don’t end up pursuing that. In your shoes, I’d make sure you complete it by the last date you’re getting paid to avoid a fight over it.
Ask your manager about the standing desk right now. They’ll probably tell you to keep it. But if they want it returned, they need to coordinate that themselves (both the disassembly and any pick-up for shipping). You can say, “It needs to be dissembled, which I’m not able to do on my own, but if can send someone here to dissemble it and haul it away, I can of course coordinate with you on that.”
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